Bethany Hughes, “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Praxis”

Choctaw theatre scholar Bethany Hughes’s essay, “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Practice,” is something I turned up searching the university library’s database for writing about land acknowledgments. “This essay thinks toward how we as scholars, artists, educators, and humans can live better on Indigenous land by overriding our entrainment to be customers, discoverers, and inhabitants of so-called ghost towns,” Hughes begins (E-23). We can come to a better understanding of Indigeneity, “learn from encounters with Indigenous peoples and spaces,” and implement practices “to better relate to the land and peoples around us” through “the concept of guesting,” which Hughes opposes to discovering, “which reduces the discovered to a kind of possession, and customer-ing, which commodifies and dehumanizes” (E-23). Instead, she writes, “guesting is focused not on attaining or accreting, but on relationships, humility, and reciprocal nurturance” (E-23). It is “an active and intentional practice of presence with the goal of honoring and supporting the Indigenous people and spaces that always already undergird, surround, and shape your life and work” (E-23). She notes that the content and structure of her essay “contribute to the decolonial praxis” she advocates by manipulating temporality and positionality in order to “unsettle Western preferences for intellect over embodiment, distance over proximity, and product over process” (E-23). This essay, she continues, 

is for those wanting to develop a practice that purposefully unmakes the colonial systems that have separated, dehumanized, and denied resources to millions. It is for those who want to better know the land on which you teach and write and create theatre. It is for those who seek to work with and not demand from Indigenous communities. It is for those who guide students into spaces with often unacknowledged history. It is for those who wish to no longer live as customers. (E-23)

Those desires reflect the ethical demands settlers who wish to decolonize place upon themselves, I think, and for that reason this essay could be important in my research.

The relationship of Indigenous peoples to land, nationhood, colonization, the past, language, oppression, and sovereignty is complex, Hughes suggests. She cites Daniel Heath Justice’s definition of Indigeneity: Indigenous refers to “those who belong to a place,” and Indigeneity “affirms the spiritual, political, territorial, linguistic, and cultural distinctions of those people whose connections to this hemisphere predate the arrival of intentional colonizing settlers and conscripted and enslaved populations” (qtd. in E-24). “Indigeneity is irreducible to land title or legal jurisdiction or phenotype or the number of language speakers,” Hughes writes. “Indigeneity is multiple and capacious” (E-24). However, the term isn’t available to everyone; while all people have a relationship to land, not all people are Indigenous. To belong to the land is one thing; to say the land belongs to us is something else. The latter is the thinking of the colonizer; the former is Indigenous thinking. 

Next, Hughes makes a distinction between ghosting and guesting. “If ghosting is that which returns to a space (physical/metaphysical), guesting is the intentional act of coming to a space (physical/metaphysical),” she writes (E-24). Guesting relies on five things: “impermanence, dependence, relationship, precedence, and reciprocity” (E-24). Guesting is not permanent; guests are not “resident owners” but rather come to a place that is already owned and that existed prior to their arrival (E-24). Guests are under the authority of their hosts; they are dependent upon them, and that dependency requires relationship with someone who is real and alive (E-24). That relationship also exists before the guests’ arrival (E-24). “Guesting well demands healthy relationships that invite respect, reciprocity, generosity, listening, conflict resolution, boundaries, and joy,” she continues. “Guesting is practicing reciprocity in the interest of generously supporting your host. It implies obligations for the guest” (E-24). From an Indigenous perspective, hosts include the land, water, animals, and “more-than-human presences” (E-24). Gestures of gratitude are insufficient for guesting; rather, it “requires thoughtful, intentional, holistic practices in thought, speech, and action. Guesting well takes time” (E-24).

Hughes now shifts to a trip to Plimoth Plantation, a living-history museum, that took place during the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in Boston in August 2018. She describes that excursion in detail. From the point when the visitors arrive, the reality of Wampanoag presence is clear at Plimoth Plantation; they are not ghosts who return, but rather they are “the people to whom the Pilgrims came” (E-25). The tour guide who greets the visitors is Wampanoag, and the Indigenous historical interpreters at Plimoth Plantation “do not have to ‘stay in character,’” unlike other employees, who are assigned the identity of a specific historical figure and must interact with visitors as that character (E-26). The “flexible temporality” that results “is matched in the performance of historical Wampanoag life”; the interpreters (all Indigenous, but not all Wampanoag) “constantly shift from past to present, from self to historical other, from nation to nation,” thereby embodying “the impermancy of guesting well in the fluidity of their interactions and acts of representation” (E-26-E-27). 

A sign at the entrance at the site attempts to teach guests to behave in respectful ways (E-27). That sign “is a model for actively engaging in improving a situation without relying upon the labor, intellectual and emotional, of the people experiencing harm. The sign is a neutral, physical, and authoritative object that guests encounter” (E-27). It is “both an invitation and path for guests to practice guesting well; it is also evidence of listening well to the hosts—the Indigenous peoples who care for the land” (E-27). My first impulse was to wonder how effective a sign would be in encouraging appropriate guesting behaviour, but Hughes states that the sign “has reduced the number of stereotypical tropes interpreters have to deal with by as much as 90 percent” (E-27).

Hughes now turns to four steps in guesting well: acknowledging one’s hosts, listening to one’s hosts, building relationships, and practicing reciprocity. “Know who your hosts are—which is to say, know where you are,” she writes. “One way you can begin knowing where you are and identifying your hosts is through performing a ‘land acknowledgment’” (E-28). A land acknowledgment is “a public declaration of guesting—most often uninvited guesting” (E-29). She makes suggestions about ways to come up with an appropriate land acknowledgment, including contacting local or regional Indigenous organizations or First Nations and “developing relationships to increase the accuracy and specificity of your land acknowledgment” (E-29). It’s important to recognize that “the complex history of Native peoples and land means that there can be many different nations connected to specific areas,” and because of that complexity, “developing relationships with local Native communities and community members is essential to recognizing your hosts” (E-29).

Listening to one’s hosts is also important. Paying attention to the website for Plimoth Plantation, which asks visitors not to show up in “Native” costume, or to the sign, which “invites guests to a kind of engagement that maximizes the quality of their experience,” are examples of such listening (E-29). “Listening well sometimes means unlearning,” Hughes writes, “sometimes means asking questions, and sometimes means trying out new ways of interacting,” and it “requires time and focus” (E-29).

Hughes offers suggestions about building relationships. She advocates introducing oneself to local communities, nations, or organizations “without asking anything from them” (E-29). “Ask if you can attend their events,” she writes. “Follow their lead for attendance and participation. Invite them to your events. Tell them about who you are and who your people are. Listen to them when they tell you about their community” (E-29). Building trust takes time, she notes. Ask for the community’s friendship, but don’t be discouraged when friendship isn’t instantaneous. It takes time to “display consistency, care, and concern” (E-29).

Finally, Hughes gives examples of practicing reciprocity. “Think carefully after listening to your hosts,” she writes. “What are their stated needs? Identify your areas of strength, the resources from which you can draw. Talk to your hosts about how those resources might be used to support their goals, to fill their needs. Get consent before beginning a project that is supposed to benefit your hosts. Let your hosts know what your needs are” (E-30). Building trust takes time and requires following through on commitments (E-30). Give back to those who act as hosts, but take their needs into account when doing so.

Hughes’s conclusion raises several questions: 

How might we actively create physical reminders that graciously invite better guesting from our students, our audience members, our patrons, and our interlocutors? How might our actions take away the burden of teaching these important skills from the populations that poor guesting most drains or exploits? How can we model guesting well and build a praxis of guesting into our productions, our classes, our departments, and our scholarships? How can we refute with our lives the received narrative that we discovered empty space, that Native Americans are merely historical phenomenon in America, and that we can pay for the right to be where we are? How can we guest well? (E-30)

Those are excellent questions, and they address Hughes’s audience—whom I take to be primarily settlers—where they are, enmeshed in ongoing colonial histories they benefit from but did not create. Those questions make me wonder whether walking on the land could be seen as part of a practice of guesting, as a way of building relationships with the land.  I think it might be—I’ve argued as much before—but a lot of what I’ve been reading over the past week has made me question whether that notion is a delusion. And I find it interesting to see concrete suggestions about steps forward, instead of vague calls to action that focus on end goals rather than the processes necessary to achieve those goals. If praxis refers to things one does, those calls to action are unlikely to lead to praxis. Hughes’s suggestions about guesting are unlikely to cause earth-shattering changes, but they are a place to begin, and I think that starting points are what’s required right now. One could object that Hughes’s suggestions are prescriptive or elementary, but that’s perhaps the downside of specificity, and I prefer those drawbacks to those that come with grand pronouncements. Maybe that’s just the way my mind works. 

Work Cited

Hughes, Bethany. “Guesting on Indigenous Land: Plimoth Plantation, Land Acknowledgment, and Decolonial Praxis.” Theatre Topics, vol. 29, no. 1, 2019, pp. E-23-E-30. https://doi.org/10.1353/tt.219.0013.